There are 16 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Another vocabulary test
From: David McCann
1b. Re: Another vocabulary test
From: Adam Walker
1c. Re: Another vocabulary test
From: Padraic Brown
1d. Re: Another vocabulary test
From: And Rosta
1e. Re: Another vocabulary test
From: Padraic Brown
2a. Re: Word lists based on order of language acquisition
From: Gary Shannon
2b. Re: Word lists based on order of language acquisition
From: MorphemeAddict
3a. Re: Time for a Party! Teoskananvoti Dabolnea!
From: Jim Henry
3b. Re: Time for a Party! Teoskananvoti Dabolnea!
From: Garth Wallace
4. Q(u)enya and Tocharian (was: New Blog Post: Moten Part VIII: ...)
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
5a. Re: Information-question words in subordinate clauses, indirect spee
From: Douglas Koller
6a. Re: THEORY: Loss of allophonic variation
From: BPJ
7a. Re: absolute pitch
From: Shair A
7b. Re: absolute pitch
From: Shair A
8a. "La aventuras de Alisia en la pais de mervelias" (Alice in Lingua Fr
From: Michael Everson
8b. "La aventuras de Alisia en la pais de mervelias" (Alice in Lingua Fr
From: Michael Everson
Messages
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1a. Re: Another vocabulary test
Posted by: "David McCann" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 30, 2012 8:25 am ((PDT))
On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:15:21 -0500
Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Clearly there is some underpondian bias in that test! :))
> Clearly. Quite a number of the usages are extremely (or at least
> somewhat) non-American, and a few of the vocabulary items (like ruck)
> simply don't exist on this side of the pond.
But do you only read books written by Americans? I know what a shoat
and a chook are, although no English person would ever use either word.
Messages in this topic (18)
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1b. Re: Another vocabulary test
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 30, 2012 8:50 am ((PDT))
No, I read voraciously from everywhere, which I why I recognized a number
of the usages as non-American usages instead of gibberish. Ruck, however,
was a completely new one on me, since it comes from a foreign sport about
which I care absolutely nothing, though I can't say I'd do much better with
the more arcane vocab and usages of American football either, since I care
equally much for that sport as I do for rugby.
Shoat and chook are also new ones on me. I can't say that I have over much
experience with Australian slang (which both ruck and chook appear to be)
or with pig farming. Now, if it had been Singlish slang or obsolete usages
from Shakespeare, or the sort of stuff that shows up in BritComs...
Adam who wonders why the test maker so like that one, ah
On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 10:25 AM, David McCann <[email protected]>wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:15:21 -0500
> Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > Clearly there is some underpondian bias in that test! :))
> > Clearly. Quite a number of the usages are extremely (or at least
> > somewhat) non-American, and a few of the vocabulary items (like ruck)
> > simply don't exist on this side of the pond.
>
> But do you only read books written by Americans? I know what a shoat
> and a chook are, although no English person would ever use either word.
>
Messages in this topic (18)
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1c. Re: Another vocabulary test
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 30, 2012 10:30 am ((PDT))
--- On Fri, 3/30/12, David McCann <[email protected]> wrote:
> From: David McCann <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [CONLANG] Another vocabulary test
> To: [email protected]
> Date: Friday, March 30, 2012, 11:25 AM
> On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:15:21 -0500
> Adam Walker <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> > > Clearly there is some underpondian bias in that
> test! :))
> > Clearly. Quite a number of the usages are
> extremely (or at least
> > somewhat) non-American, and a few of the vocabulary
> items (like ruck)
> > simply don't exist on this side of the pond.
>
> But do you only read books written by Americans? I know what
> a shoat
> and a chook are, although no English person would ever use
> either word.
No, but neither do I read books (or pay attention to the minor details of)
sports in general, American or otherwise. Apparently a ruck is some minor
detail in Australian football a/o rugby. Or something. It would be like
placing the word "touch back" or "short stop" on the list. I don't know
what shoats and chooks are, though the first one sounds vaguely edible.
(Had to look em up, and it seems that both are edible and probably highly
tasty.)
I just thought it odd that out of 140 rather common, ordinary words (nothing
anywhere near as difficult as the other test!), the testers would
throw in a single obviously non-universal term that happens to be not only
highly sport-specific but also highly Ozenzed-sport-specific. They didn't
toss in any other obvious regionalisms (Briticisms, Canadianisms, South
Africanisms, Indianisms, etc) or any other highly technical, agricultural
or scientific terms (such as chook and shoat).
Padraic
Messages in this topic (18)
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1d. Re: Another vocabulary test
Posted by: "And Rosta" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 30, 2012 4:09 pm ((PDT))
On Mar 30, 2012 4:25 PM, "David McCann" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I know what a shoat
> and a chook are, although no English person would ever use either word.
English persons who would use _chook_ must number in the hundreds of
thousands if not millions. IIRC, David, you're a middle class Londoner, but
in fact not all English people are, and those who aren't speak different
dialects from middle class londoners.
As for _shoat_, the word is only as rare as its denotation.
Messages in this topic (18)
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1e. Re: Another vocabulary test
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 30, 2012 8:00 pm ((PDT))
--- On Thu, 3/29/12, Garth Wallace <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Clearly there is some underpondian bias in that test! :))
>
> Underpondian? I didn't realize there were any dialects of
> English spoken at the bottom of the Atlantic. ;p
Ah, that's Bathypondian!
Padraic
Messages in this topic (18)
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2a. Re: Word lists based on order of language acquisition
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 30, 2012 8:45 am ((PDT))
On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 4:03 AM, Veoler <[email protected]> wrote:
> This might interest you:
>
> http://www.une.edu.au/bcss/linguistics/nsm/
>
>
> 2012/3/28 Matthew Martin <[email protected]>:
>> I've been kicking around the idea of a small family conlang (a fake language
>> with a small fixed vocab, for use in a home setting among parents and
>> children).
I've found NSM to be very interesting. My one misgiving with it is
that the semantic primes are primitive in a deep, abstract way, but
are not "primitive" to human experience. A baby learns what "fur" is
by grabbing the cat and rubbing his face in its fur, and tasting it
and smelling it. "Fur" is a primitive of human experience, just as
"cat" or "mouse" or "sunshine" or "water". By contrast, I recall once
reading an NSM definition for "mouse" that was hundreds of words long.
NSM primitives are discovered by long and thoughtful analysis of a
wide range of semantic concepts. Experiential primitives are
discovered by crawling around in the grass, playing with the cat,
knocking over a glass of water, taking a bath, going out in the
snow,...
While the NSM vocabulary is fine for philosophers and linguists, I
would think a vocabulary for children would consist more of basic
actions, substantives and attributes common to daily experience like
"water", "food", "sleep", "play" ("run", "jump"), "laugh", "cry",
"happy", "sad", "angry", "hurt". These are things that are experienced
directly and do not need to be defined or explained. So while the
philosopher finds it interesting to define "cat" the child needs no
definition: http://www.wimp.com/littlegirl/
--gary
Messages in this topic (5)
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2b. Re: Word lists based on order of language acquisition
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 30, 2012 1:06 pm ((PDT))
The Swadesh 207 list works much better than NSM for the basic sort of
experiential vocabulary you describe.
stevo
On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 11:45 AM, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 4:03 AM, Veoler <[email protected]> wrote:
> > This might interest you:
> >
> > http://www.une.edu.au/bcss/linguistics/nsm/
> >
> >
> > 2012/3/28 Matthew Martin <[email protected]>:
> >> I've been kicking around the idea of a small family conlang (a fake
> language
> >> with a small fixed vocab, for use in a home setting among parents and
> children).
>
> I've found NSM to be very interesting. My one misgiving with it is
> that the semantic primes are primitive in a deep, abstract way, but
> are not "primitive" to human experience. A baby learns what "fur" is
> by grabbing the cat and rubbing his face in its fur, and tasting it
> and smelling it. "Fur" is a primitive of human experience, just as
> "cat" or "mouse" or "sunshine" or "water". By contrast, I recall once
> reading an NSM definition for "mouse" that was hundreds of words long.
>
> NSM primitives are discovered by long and thoughtful analysis of a
> wide range of semantic concepts. Experiential primitives are
> discovered by crawling around in the grass, playing with the cat,
> knocking over a glass of water, taking a bath, going out in the
> snow,...
>
> While the NSM vocabulary is fine for philosophers and linguists, I
> would think a vocabulary for children would consist more of basic
> actions, substantives and attributes common to daily experience like
> "water", "food", "sleep", "play" ("run", "jump"), "laugh", "cry",
> "happy", "sad", "angry", "hurt". These are things that are experienced
> directly and do not need to be defined or explained. So while the
> philosopher finds it interesting to define "cat" the child needs no
> definition: http://www.wimp.com/littlegirl/
>
> --gary
>
Messages in this topic (5)
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3a. Re: Time for a Party! Teoskananvoti Dabolnea!
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 30, 2012 9:27 am ((PDT))
On 3/29/12, Garth Wallace <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 10:43 AM, Jim Henry <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On 3/24/12, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> Of course. And, certainly I would never completely populate a dictionary
>>> with generated words -- at least not to the level of automatically
>>> assigning meaning. That would just give me a relex, anyway -- I want to
>>> play with semantic fields a bit.
>>
>> It wouldn't necessarily be a relex, if you devised the list of glosses
>> with care, and then randomly assigned wordforms to the glosses. I did
>> basically that with säb zjeda -- devised a list of glosses, assigned
>> each gloss an estimate of frequency, sorted the glosses by estimated
>> frequency, and then assigned randomly generated words sorted by
>> length. Of course, säb zjeda is not my most satisfying project. But
>> being a relex is not one of its defects.
>
> Did you automate this process at all?
Yes; see http://jimhenry.conlang.org/conlang/conlang13/scripts.zip and
http://jimhenry.conlang.org/conlang/redundancy-scripts.zip for the
Perl scripts I used to do it.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
Messages in this topic (17)
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3b. Re: Time for a Party! Teoskananvoti Dabolnea!
Posted by: "Garth Wallace" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 30, 2012 10:42 am ((PDT))
On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 9:26 AM, Jim Henry <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 3/29/12, Garth Wallace <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 10:43 AM, Jim Henry <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> On 3/24/12, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>> Of course. And, certainly I would never completely populate a dictionary
>>>> with generated words -- at least not to the level of automatically
>>>> assigning meaning. That would just give me a relex, anyway -- I want to
>>>> play with semantic fields a bit.
>>>
>>> It wouldn't necessarily be a relex, if you devised the list of glosses
>>> with care, and then randomly assigned wordforms to the glosses. I did
>>> basically that with säb zjeda -- devised a list of glosses, assigned
>>> each gloss an estimate of frequency, sorted the glosses by estimated
>>> frequency, and then assigned randomly generated words sorted by
>>> length. Of course, säb zjeda is not my most satisfying project. But
>>> being a relex is not one of its defects.
>>
>> Did you automate this process at all?
>
> Yes; see http://jimhenry.conlang.org/conlang/conlang13/scripts.zip and
> http://jimhenry.conlang.org/conlang/redundancy-scripts.zip for the
> Perl scripts I used to do it.
Thanks! This sounds useful.
Messages in this topic (17)
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4. Q(u)enya and Tocharian (was: New Blog Post: Moten Part VIII: ...)
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 30, 2012 9:46 am ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 10:49:34 -0400 Roman Rausch wrote:
> An addendum regarding that and Early Qenya: In the mentioned source, Tolkien
> actually lists nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative as 'cases', but
> inessive _-sse_, ablative _-llo_, allative _-nta, -tta_, partitive _-inen_,
> manner _-ndon_ as 'adverbial suffixes'. About the differences between them
> he writes:
>
> "(i) They (the adv. suffixes) naturally cannot be all formed from every noun
> and adjective; (ii) they are never added, except in verse, to an adjective
> in agreement with an expressed noun: where a qualified noun receives one of
> these endings (a somewhat archaic mode) the adjective usually precedes
> uninflected (except rarely for plural) and is virtually a loose compound"
>
> In other words, the cases are word-marking with agreement:
> _ni heps-ine [...] i mailin-e-n losse-li-n_ 'I bound [...] the beautiful
> flowers'
> I bind-PST ART beautiful-PL-ACC flower-PL-ACC
>
> The adv. suffixes are group-marking:
> _taara kas-i-sse(-n)_ 'on the high tops'
> high head-PL-INE(-PL)
Just like Tocharian! Tocharian has three "primary cases" (nom.,
obl., gen.) and several "secondary cases" (different in Toch. A
and Toch. B; formed by adding suffixes to the oblique form).
While primary cases are word-marked, secondary cases are group-
marked, with all but the final word in the NP taking the oblique:
(1) Tocharian A
yâtälwâtses tsopats-tampes nermits.inäs wrassaśśäl
powerful-OBL mighty-OBL artificial-OBL being-PL-COM
'with the powerful, mighty, artificial beings'
(2) Tocharian B
kektseñ reki palskosa
body-OBL word-OBL thought-PERL
'by body, word and thought'
(B. W. Fortson, _Indo-European Language and Culture_, 2nd edition,
p. 407)
--
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
"Bêsel asa Êm, a Êm atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Êmel." - SiM 1:1
Messages in this topic (1)
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5a. Re: Information-question words in subordinate clauses, indirect spee
Posted by: "Douglas Koller" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 30, 2012 2:12 pm ((PDT))
> Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:31:49 -0500
> From: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Information-question words in subordinate clauses, indirect
> speech etc.
> To: [email protected]
> On Mon, 27 Feb 2012 11:36:07 -0500, Jim Henry <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> >For instance, in the equivalents of
> >1. Where is the restroom?
Ch� bw�naks la cher-ha h�mal?
the restroom-nom. aux.-pres. where be.at-interrogative?
> >2. "Where is the restroom?" he asked.
�Ch� bw�naks la cher-ha h�mal?� s�b l� n��af.
�the restroom-nom. aux.-pres. where be.at-interrogative?� he-nom. aux.-past ask.
> >3. He asked where the restroom was.
> If the original statement was �Where is the restroom?�:
S�b l�, g� ch� bw�naks la cher-ha h�imal sho, n��af.
he-nom. past, THAT the restroom-nom. pres. where be.at-discoursive SHO, ask
> If the original statement was �Where was the restroom?� (i.e., it�s been
> moved; where was it before?)
S�b l�, g� ch� bw�naks l� cher-ha h�imal sho, n��af.
he-nom. past, THAT the restroom-nom. past. where be.at-discoursive SHO, ask
> >4. I didn't know where the restroom was. (where is it now?)
F� l�, g� ch� bw�naks la cher-ha h�imal sho, sfer�l.
I-nom./negative past, THAT the restroom-nom. pres. where be.at-discoursive SHO,
know.
> (where did it used to be?)
F� l�, g� ch� bw�naks l� cher-ha h�imal sho, sfer�l.
I-nom./negative past, THAT the restroom-nom. past where be.at-discoursive SHO,
know.
> >5. This is the house where Shakespeare was born.
Ch� hengebs la ch� b��bs, ch�b�v Sh�ksp�rs l� f�ten sho, n�i.
the this-nom. pres. the house-nom., which-locative Shakespeare-nom. past
be.born SHO, be.
> Charlie
Ch�l ngarebs�zh lat, zg�dekh cha pth���ens z�aur�n la gaief sho, dn�f.
the-dual dog-nom./dual pres./passive, where the fern-nom. red-nom. pres. grow
SHO, bury.
The (2) dogs are buried where the red fern grows.
Zg�dekh makhlama la se rhebuthset hautel (sho), makhlama la �re sethet ba ndezh
ba kfauh�z hedaikh.
where wwe-nom. pres. indef.-art disease-acc. see-speculative (SHO), we-nom.
pres. in.order.(to) it-acc. BA cure BA do.one's.best should-conclusive
Where we see disease, we should work to cure it.
Kou
Messages in this topic (9)
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6a. Re: THEORY: Loss of allophonic variation
Posted by: "BPJ" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 30, 2012 2:47 pm ((PDT))
On 2012-03-29 06:32, Eric Christopherson wrote:
> On Mar 26, 2012, at 10:40 AM, Alex Fink wrote:
>
> > On Mon, 26 Mar 2012 17:24:21 +0200,
> > BPJ<[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > > On 2012-03-26 02:46, Eric Christopherson wrote:
> > > \> Oh, yeah. Does anyone know how the*onset* of
> > > such a syllable was affected by the closedness of
> > > it?
> > >
> > > Yes, that's what I described: if the syllable was
> > > closed
> > >
> > > [...] Apparently the onset, and probably also the
> > > nucleus, became relatively shorter when there was
> > > a coda.
> >
> > Right, presumably the *how* of the matter was some
> > sort of isochrony rule: (non-initial) syllables
> > were tendentially all kept at the same length (with
> > perhaps some exception for proto-long onsets). So
> > if there was a coda consonant, that entailed less
> > room for the onset (or the V).
>
> OK, so the stops that would end up as fricatives were
> originally short stops; and I'm guessing they
> contrasted with the forerunners of the stops that now
> are either short or long. Is that assumption correct?
>
> If so, it reminds me of Sami's system of three
> distinctive lengths. I've been trying to wrap my head
> around consonant gradation in Sami today, but I
> haven't been able to discern if it's directly
> correlated to the Finnish gradations or not.
AFAIU Finnish and Sami consonant gradation are
basically the same at least in origin, though both
have been obscured by later changes.
There were only two underlying quantities, but each of
them was realized shorter/weaker in the onset of a
closed syllable than in the onset of an open syllable,
so there were three surface grades, only two of which
were realized as a quantity distinction; the weakest
grade was relized as a qualitative distinction:
voiced fricatives vs. short and long voiceless stops
or long sonorant vs. sonorant followed by long or short stop.
Estonian later actually acquired three phonemic
quantities for both vowels and consonants when former
allophonic length distinctions due to word/syllable
metrics were phonemicized due to apocope. This was a
separate but similar development (for which I've been
unable to find an online account); both involve the
phonemicization of former allophonic isochrony
phenomena. Estonian synchronic morphology becomes
rather convoluted when trying to describe both
kinds of gradation as a single phenomenon.
/bpj
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7a. Re: absolute pitch
Posted by: "Shair A" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 30, 2012 9:09 pm ((PDT))
Excuse me - I meant to say that my conlang, 13:11-8, has an absolute pitch
system.
2012/3/30 Shair A <[email protected]>
> 13:11-8.
>
>
> 2012/3/21 Herman Miller <[email protected]>
>
>> On 3/21/2012 6:54 AM, MorphemeAddict wrote:
>>
>>> Are there any languages or peoples that use or require absolute pitch?
>>>
>>> stevo
>>>
>>
>> Solresol? Well, even that could be spoken in different keys, if you have
>> a long enough text to establish the tonic. So, probably not.
>>
>
>
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7b. Re: absolute pitch
Posted by: "Shair A" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 30, 2012 9:10 pm ((PDT))
13:11-8.
2012/3/21 Herman Miller <[email protected]>
> On 3/21/2012 6:54 AM, MorphemeAddict wrote:
>
>> Are there any languages or peoples that use or require absolute pitch?
>>
>> stevo
>>
>
> Solresol? Well, even that could be spoken in different keys, if you have a
> long enough text to establish the tonic. So, probably not.
>
Messages in this topic (8)
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8a. "La aventuras de Alisia en la pais de mervelias" (Alice in Lingua Fr
Posted by: "Michael Everson" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 31, 2012 12:14 am ((PDT))
Evertype would like to announce the publication of Simon Davies' translation of
�Alice's Adventures in Wonderland� into Lingua Franca Nova, �La Aventuras de
Alisia en la pais de mervelias�. The book uses John Tenniel's classic
illustrations. A page with links to Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk is available at
http://www.evertype.com/books/alice-eo-broadribb.html . Bookstores can order
copies at a discount from the publisher.
>From the Introduction (English follows below):
Lewis Carroll es un nom falsa: la nom vera de la autor ia es Charles Lutwidge
Dodgson, e el ia es Ensenior de Matematica a Christ Church, en la Universia de
Oxford. Dodgson ia comensa la nara a 4 julio 1862, cuando el ia fa un viaja en
un barceta de remos sur la rio Thames en Oxford en junta con Eglesor Robinson
Duckworth, Alice Liddell (ci ia ave des anios, e ia es la fia de la Decano de
Christ Church), e se du sores, Lorina (des-tre anios), e Edith (oto anios).
Como la poesia inisial de la libro clari, la tre xicas ia demanda un nara de
Dodgson e, nonvolente a la comensa, el ia raconta la varia prima de la nara a
los. Ave multe referes partal ascondeda a la sinco de los tra tota la testo de
la libro mesma, cual ia es final publicida en 1865.
Lingua Franca Nova (LFN) es un lingua aidante con un gramatica simple, creolin,
e lojical. Lo ia es creada par Dr C. George Boeree de la Universia de
Shippensburg, Penn�sylvania, comensante en 1965. Inspirada par la Lingua Franca
istorial usada sirca la Mediteraneo, lo prende se vocabulo de catalan,
espaniol, franses, italian, e portuges. En 1998, LFN ia es publicida a la
interede, e se parlores ia continua developa e boni la lingua tra la anios
seguente. On trova aora disionarios, gramaticas, e multe otra traduis en la
rede a lfn.wikia.com.
La nara de Carroll conteni multe bon bromas de parolas, e estas presenta cisa
la interesa xef per un traduor. Alga depende de cualias strana de la gramatica
engles. Per esemplo, la esclama famosa �Curiouser and curiouser!� a la comensa
de Capitol II es comica car se forma es lojical ma nongramatical; en LFN, do la
gramatica es sempre lojical, no tal era es posible, e donce la tradui broma en
loca sur la lojica mesma.
Multe de la bromas lingual relata a confusas de parolas omofon, de cual engles
ave un cuantia grande. Felis per la traduor, omofones esiste ance en LFN: un
bon esemplo es �foca� en Capitol IX, en la parte de la nara do tal bromas apare
la plu densa. Carroll broma ance sur linguaje difisil o an tota confondente,
per esemplo en la parla prima de la Dodo, o la varia �simplida� de un de la
lesones moral cual la Duxesa ofre. Natural, on pote scrive noncomprendable en
cualce lingua, ma la vocabulo de LFN es tal desiniada ce lo prefere sempre
parolas �franca� ante sinonimes babelosa.
Alga bromas depende de la cultur brites de la eda victorian: on trova referes a
cabanas de nada (do nadores ia desvesti se a borda de la mar) e a sopas falsa
de tortuga (preparada con organos de boveta en loca de carne de tortuga). An la
nom de la Lepre de Marto refere a un idiom engles cual es poca usada oji. Plu,
la poesias tende parodia strofes alora bon conoseda ma aora no plu. Car LFN no
ia esiste en 1865, esta tradui no pote fa plu ca redona tal cosas en un modo
leteral�ma esta es ance la sola manera de comprende los per la plu de lejores
moderna en cualce lingua.
La tradui raconta la aventuras de Alisia en la tempo presente, an si Carroll ia
scrive los en la pasada. Esta cualia simplinte es alga comun en naras en LFN
cuando la avenis es fantasin e se loca en la tempo no importa: pratical, lo
evita un repete suprafluente de la paroleta �ia�. On ia ajusta la puntua, xef
sirca parlas direta, per coere con la otra volumes en la serie.
Pare ce esta tradui es la libro prima primida en Lingua Franca Nova. Ta ce lo
es la prima de multe.
Simon Davies
Wellingore 2012
=====
Lewis Carroll is a pen-name: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was the author�s real
name and he was lecturer in Mathematics in Christ Church, Oxford. Dodgson began
the story on 4 July 1862, when he took a journey in a rowing boat on the river
Thames in Oxford together with the Reverend Robinson Duckworth, with Alice
Liddell (ten years of age), the daughter of the Dean of Christ Church, and with
her two sisters, Lorina (thirteen years of age), and Edith (eight years of
age). As is clear from the poem at the beginning of the book, the three girls
asked Dodgson for a story and reluctantly at first he began to tell the first
version of the story to them. There are many half-hidden references made to the
five of them throughout the text of the book itself, which was finally
published in 1865.
Lingua Franca Nova (LFN) is a creole-like auxiliary language with a simple and
logical grammar. It was created by Dr C. George Boeree of Shippensburg
University, Penn�sylvania, starting in 1965. Inspired by the historical Lingua
Franca that was once used around the Mediterranean, it draws its vocabulary
from Catalan, French, Italian, Portu�guese, and Spanish. In 1998, LFN was
published on the Internet, and its speakers have continued to develop and
im�prove it over the subsequent years. Dictionaries, gram�mars, and many other
translations are available at lfn.wikia.com.
Carroll�s story contains a lot of excellent wordplay, and this perhaps provides
the main interest for a translator. Some of the jokes rely on peculiar features
of English grammar. For instance, the famous exclamation of �Curiouser and
curiouser!� at the start of Chapter II is funny because it has a logical but
ungrammatical form; in LFN, where the grammar is always logical, no such
mistake is possible, and so the translation instead makes a joke about logic
itself.
Many of the puns relate to confusions of words that sound the same, of which
English has a large number. Happily for the translator, homophones exist in LFN
too: a good example is �foca� in Chapter IX, in the part of the story that has
the greatest density of such jokes. Carroll also makes jokes about language
that is difficult or even utterly baffling�the Dodo�s first speech, for
example, or the �simplified� version of one of the morals offered by the
Duchess. It is of course possible to write incomprehensibly in any language,
but the design of LFN�s vocabulary always prefers straightforward terms over
synonymous gobbledy�gook.
Some of the jokes depend on British culture of the Victorian era: we find
references to bathing machines (where swimmers would get changed at the edge of
the sea) and to mock turtle soups (prepared with calf offal in place of turtle
meat). Even the name of the March Hare alludes to an English idiom that is
little used today. Furthermore, the poems tend to parody verses that were once
well known but no longer are. As LFN did not exist in 1865, this translation
can offer no more than a literal rendition of such things�but then that is the
only way most modern readers can under�stand them in any language.
The translation recounts Alice�s adventures in the present tense, even though
Carroll wrote them in the past. This simplification is quite common in LFN
stories if the events are fantastical and their location in time is irrelevant:
in practical terms, it avoids excessive repetition of the particle �ia�.
Punctuation, especially around direct speech, has been adjusted for consistency
with the other volumes in the series.
It appears that this is the first book to be printed in Lingua Franca Nova. May
it be the first of many.
Simon Davies
Wellingore 2012
==========
Michaael Everson
Evertype, http://alice-in-wonderland-books.com
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
8b. "La aventuras de Alisia en la pais de mervelias" (Alice in Lingua Fr
Posted by: "Michael Everson" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 31, 2012 1:36 am ((PDT))
> A page with links to Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk is available
> at http://www.evertype.com/books/alice-eo-broadribb.html .
Correction: http://www.evertype.com/books/alice-lfn.html .
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
Messages in this topic (2)
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